The AsterNym star registry
Sharjah
Sharjah: the deep red star of Scorpius
deep red · Scorpius · HIP 79431
Sharjah is a deep red star in the constellation Scorpius, one of the stars with a proper name recognised in the IAU Catalog of Star Names. At magnitude 11.34 it is a binocular or telescope object.
Most stars in the sky are anonymous points of light. Sharjah is not. Some IAU-recognised names are ancient; others were adopted by the IAU only recently. Either way, the star already has a scientific identity, and a dedication attaches a human story to it.
Real star · Personal dedication · Recorded in the AsterNym registry
See what a dedicated page looks like: preview
Sharjah at a glance
- Constellation
- Scorpius
- Other name
- HIP 79431
- Catalogue number
- HIP 79431
- Distance
- ≈ 48 light-years
- Brightness
- Magnitude 11.34 telescope
- Star type
- M3V
- Colour
- deep red
- Best seen from
- Almost everywhere on Earth
- Right ascension
- 16h 12m 42s
- Declination
- −18° 52′ 32″
J2000 catalogue coordinates that can be independently cross-checked against astronomical databases. A planetarium app showing coordinates of date will differ slightly, because proper motion and precession move a star’s apparent position over time.
What kind of star is Sharjah?
Sharjah is a red main-sequence star. Its surface runs under 4,000°C, which is cool as stars go and why the colour is unmistakably red. Colour in a star is a temperature reading rather than a decoration: the hot ones are blue and the cool ones red, the opposite way round to a kitchen tap.
Most of the stars in the galaxy are this kind and almost none of them are visible to the eye. The red ones you can see are the exceptions: enormous, swollen and close to the end rather than small and long-lived.
A star of this class gets hundreds of thousands of millions of years for the small ones.
It is a main-sequence star, which despite the word dwarf simply means it is in the long stable middle of its life, fusing hydrogen in its core exactly as the Sun is doing now.
Sharjah moves noticeably against the background sky, about 21 arcseconds a century. The constellation it belongs to will not have quite this shape in ten thousand years.
The light you are looking at is old
The light you can see from Sharjah left in 1978, which puts it roughly a lifetime ago. Nobody has invented anything since then that the light knows about; it has simply been travelling.
That delay is the part people find hardest and like most. A star is the one thing you can give someone that was already old before either of you was born and will outlast anything else you could have chosen.
It sits at the edge of what an unaided eye can do, so finding it is a deliberate act rather than an accident.
What could a Sharjah dedication represent?
Sharjah is especially meaningful for someone who:
- · Deserves something older than any gift shop
- · Marks a beginning, an anniversary or a promise
- · Is remembered every time you look up
- · Has a light you want recorded somewhere permanent
Dedication idea
“For the one I think of when I find Scorpius in the sky.”
Where can you see Sharjah?
It sits 19° south of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 71°N, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 19°S. It stands highest at midnight in May, so May and June evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 11.34 it sits below naked-eye reach; binoculars or a small telescope will find it.
Sharjah belongs to Scorpius.
What does Sharjah mean in astrology?
The classical fixed-star tradition: Ptolemy, the medieval Behenian lists, Robson’s 1923 compilation. Is silent on Sharjah, and we don’t invent lore where none exists. What astrology can still read is the star’s real position, below.
Projected onto the zodiac the way fixed-star astrology reads any star, Sharjah stands at 4° Sagittarius at the J2000 epoch, and the Sun passes that degree around 23 November in the years around 2000. Fixed-star longitude shifts slowly against the tropical zodiac because of precession, about one degree every seventy-two years, so a natal conjunction must be calculated for the birth year rather than read off this J2000 value or a calendar date.
Traditional interpretations, not facts or predictions. The position and dates are computed.
Dedicate Sharjah to someone who matters
A flower fades. A card is eventually put away. A star gives your message a place in the sky.
from$29.95a year
Dedicate Sharjah →Real star · your message · a page to share
Your Sharjah dedication includes
- Your chosen dedication name
- Your personal message
- Sharjah's real astronomical coordinates
- A shareable dedication page
- Its location on the AsterNym Galaxy Map
- An optional printable certificate and gift presentation
Sharjah keeps its established astronomical name. Your dedication is a personal commemorative record within the AsterNym registry.
Frequently asked questions about Sharjah
- What does Sharjah mean in astrology?
- The classical fixed-star tradition has no documented meaning for Sharjah. Projected onto the zodiac, Sharjah stands at 4° Sagittarius, and the Sun passes that degree each year around 23 November.
- Is Sharjah the brightest star?
- Sharjah shines at magnitude 11.34 · a binocular-and-telescope star, one of the few thousand stars with an officially recognised name.
- How far away is Sharjah?
- Sharjah is approximately 48 light-years from Earth. The light reaching us tonight began its journey around 48 years ago.
- Which constellation contains Sharjah?
- Sharjah is part of Scorpius.
- Can everyone see Sharjah?
- It sits 19° south of the celestial equator, so it clears the horizon everywhere short of latitude 71°N, in practice, every inhabited latitude on Earth. It passes directly overhead at latitude 19°S. It stands highest at midnight in May, so May and June evenings are the best time to look. At magnitude 11.34 it sits below naked-eye reach; binoculars or a small telescope will find it.
- Is dedicating Sharjah an official astronomical renaming?
- No. Sharjah keeps its internationally recognised astronomical name. An AsterNym dedication records your personal name and message in the AsterNym registry without changing the star's scientific identity.
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